What's a quote that has stuck with you for your whole life?
I always loved browsing such posts on reddit, so thought I should make one on lemmy too
Edit: Usually these kind of posts only used to have excerpts from books or ancient proverbs, but now I am seeing a lot more quotes from shows/movies/games are also resonating with people. It’s pretty cool to see.
Oof, I have quite a lot. One of my favourites is, “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
I find it immensely relatable, as I think a huge number of problems in the world today stem from simply apathy. People who say they dislike the state of the world and even that they want to change it, but refuse to do absolutely anything at all, being perfectly content to just let bad things happen.
This comment reminds me of the Eichmann trial. He wasn’t inherently evil like we want to believe. He was just a man doing his job, sending jews to their death. It’s pretty chilling to think about the evils he carried out when he was just doing what he was told to do.
Another somewhat counterpoint, I think in today’s society it’s harder than it traditionally has been. Specifically, I would love to go to protests and be more active. But for me it’s really hard to do that because I have obligations. Specifically, I can’t take a week off of work to go to DC and hold some signs. It’s not that I’m refusing to do anything, I just don’t have the time when I’m more worried about my mortgage. I do donate to charities but it’s very difficult to do much more because of debt.
Me too! But the other problem I have is if I get hurt at a protest I can’t work. I’m the primary breadwinner for my houshold. So if I go to jail, or get shot with a rubber bullet, my family will starve.
"For all of the most important things, the timing always sucks. Waiting for a good time to quit your job? The stars will never align and the traffic lights of life will never all be green at the same time. The universe doesn’t conspire against you, but it doesn’t go out of its way to line up the pins either. Conditions are never perfect. ‘Someday’ is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you.”
Cannot remember where this is from but I like it enough tosaved it in my notenbook.
Not my circus, not my monkeys. Let go or get dragged.
I heard them from my mom who went to Al Anon (I was in alcoholics anonymous). The first one is don’t make other people’s problems your problems. The second relates to letting people make their own mistakes. They’re the greatest teacher
“Don’t regret. Remember.” From the movie “Portrait of a Lady on Fire.” Changed how I think about a lot of the events in my past. The director said that fans have come up to her and shown her tattoos of that line, so it’s not just me.
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
Frank Herbert, Dune
Now, what’s the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there’s no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I’m asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so.
Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World
The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks.
Christopher Hitchens, Letters to a Young Contrarian
FYI formatting those quotes as code makes them really hard to read, at least for me–the lines don’t break, so I have to scroll the text to the right to get it to be visible. You’d probably be better off with a blockquote,
which would look more like this. That’s done with a > at the start of the line
It’s a quote for a horrible 90s indie film that’s always struck with me for some reason. My social group and I have since taken this quote as an absolute/truism that gets referenced whenever a situation calls for absolute certainty. Because as we all know, there’s no room on Mars for limp dicks.
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